I met this hot girl the other night who really likes to flaunt her Jolie look, so maybe busting out a Brad Pitt would help me get in the door...

Oh damn...  There's one problem...  Even if we really clicked, I don't think we could be highly individual enough to pull off a Brangelena without the hottest accessory in town... 

Of course you know... I mean it's only hanging from the neck of Sandra Bullock on the cover of People Magazine this week...

Listen Up Everyone: The HOT new accessory for this spring has sprung:

Black Babies are where it's at.

  Of course, you MUST have known this product would take off... "Black Baby" just rolls off the tongue...  And the skin tone goes SO well with Louis Vuitton... 

I mean, is it really a surprise that Sandra named her latest little accessory "Louis"? 

Now the hard-core trend setters like Madonna, ex-Brangelina and Tom Cruise were all way ahead of the curve on this.  Truly they SET the curve... and it's really picking up speed.  Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw, Jeoly Fisher, Hugh Jackman, Mary-Louise Parker all jumped on-board...  But People Magazine has splattered their cover with photos of Sandra Bullock and her little Louis accessory, and I for one think it's great!

You see, I was never one for Chihuahuas, and that whole Paris Hilton puppy in a purse phase is SO 2007.  I mean, pink and fuzzy had a good run...  But we've milked it for enough years folks.  It's time to get back to basics, and NOTHING says "O.G." more than brown and gold.

And the great thing is, you don't have to pull a "Bruno" and go all the way to Africa!  Thanks to Hurricaine Katrina, people have woken up to the fact that New Orleans is the Uganda of the United States...  So you can avoid those pricey import fees by buying domestic!

Just think of how hot you'll look with a cute little Louis, Gucci or Dolce (all highly suggested names) swinging from your shoulder! 

Author's Note:

You know, if just ONE celebrity did this, I wouldn't blink.  But celebrity after celebrity is starting to annoy the shit out of me. 

Listen up you idiots:

There are children starving all around the world.  Adopting ONE is a selfish, "look at me" kind of move, and yes we all see through it.    I know that if feels great to pose with your new accessory-child-of-ethnicity in a narcissitic orgie of pseudo "altruism" in front photographers... it just feels so good.  Especially when you're a 30+ or 40-something celeb who really wants that lime light...    

You want to make a difference? 

You really care about the plight of these people?

How about selling one of your multi-multi-million dollar estates and building several schools, or a couple thousand wells?  I guess helping out tens of thousands of unfortunate people doesn't feel warm and fuzzy as spending 4 years waiting and working to get your own 'designer baby'. 

Next Up: Chinese-Baby-Slippers (spoiler: they're disposable!)

On the ENTIRE PLANET there are only 4 third-world countries that border what are considered first-world countries. Three of those are Iran, Iraq and Syria, which border Turkey. (I would personally contest Turkey being considered first-world...)

The fourth country is Mexico... which in 2004 had the illustrious title of "Kidnapping Capital of the World."

However, Mexico City didn't turn out to be the utopic paradise that you might image...

The driving of a culture is, in my opinion, a good reflection of the culture in general.

For example, in germany, the people drive VERY fast, very well, yield to each other, and obey the laws... They are uptight yet very skilled and precise drivers.

My experience of Mexico City was that people drive 5 cars wide in three lane roads, drive over the center median into oncoming traffic to get a few extra car-lengths ahead, and take red lights to be a vague suggestion. (people sit perched at red lights looking for an opening to shoot through...) I saw three brutal t-bone accidents and one pedestrian dead in the road in a whopping 2 days of driving in Mexico City. My cab driver spent 15 minutes trying desparately to enter a traffic circle leaving the airport because no one lets anyone in... you have to jam your way through traffic like a bull. 

To add to the glee of driving in Mexico, the government and people take such pride in their capital city that the roads are pitted with potholes the size of open graves... I drove the length and width of Belize without a hitch, but blew out both tires and bent a rim hitting a 4 foot pothole on a freeway overpass between the two largest freeways in the capital city. Hecho en Mexico.

Much like the drivers, the shop owners and police officers seemed to view us as obstacles to be navigated, pushed around and taken advantage of.  People were continually trying to screw the stupid tourist out of money, send you in the wrong direction, and generally make life miserable.  (And in the police's case, they were successful).

A mere three days into our Mexico Shitty vacation, we decided to rent a car and get the hell out of dodge. We were pulled over by police before we could leave the city, who wanted to give us the 'going away present' of claiming I ran a red light (note: I was quite possibly the only person in mexico city who wasn't running red lights), and literally had us empty our wallets into his sweaty hands, rather than take us to jail.

Ah, the memories.

On our drive to the coastal jungles to the East, we started to think perhaps we made a mistake... Maybe Mexico wasn't all that bad. Maybe we weren't thinking clearly becasue of the horribly polluted Mexico City air, which you can TASTE as much as smell...

But then we passed Pueblo... Pueblo is a sweeping city that looks like it was constructed with the exclusive use of cinder blocks... However, prior to the completion of a single building in Pueblo, there was apparently a mass exodus of all the adults, leaving only children to live in the post-apocalyptic garbage heap that remained.

In this lord-of-the-flies hell, the inhabitants have apparently created a currency using garbage. It's literally a city of 3 walled, half-roofless cinder block houses, with glassless open windows and ladders instead of stairs to the mounds of garbage piled on the rooftops.... The most prestigious members of this society have the most garbage on their rooves. Or so it seems... We didn't stay to find out.

Ah, Mexico.

Never again.

We headed south to the jungles of chiapas and the Zapotista rebels who are sticking it to mexico's version of "the man" (who in this case wears cammo, and carries a big machine gun which he points at you while searching your rental car's trunk because it's more fun to screw with obviously harmless tourists than keep sticking it to the rebelling peasants who have guns and communist flags...)

The jungles of southern mexico are dense and amazing. It's an incredible country, which has only one problem... It's filled with Mexicans... Mexicans who view the countryside as a large garbage bin.

As a matter of fact, if there's a theme to Mexico that I've detected outside of the most touristy of the tourist spots, that theme would be garbage.

Exhausted yet relieved, we rolled across the border of mexico into Belize.

Amazingly, Mexico's very poor neighbor to the south, Belize was spotless, and the people were honest and incredibly friendly... Something we hadn't encountered once in the entirety of mexico.

When I was there we stayed near Belize City... We stayed at the Best Western Biltmore (which was more of a motel, although a reasonable pool). It shows quite expensive online when I look now, but I don't remember it being expensive at all.

The airport is in the north (we drove in from the mexican border to the north... not much to the north so you're not missing much if you don't go up there... just a lot of flat land...).

Belize City isn't all that great... I was there more for jungle/nature, and we drove all the way down to Punta Gorda in the south (the southernmost point). Make sure you have plenty of gas, because we were almost out when we got down there, and the ONLY gas station in all of southern belize closed early that day (like 3 pm!) so we were stuck going door to door in the middle of the night looking for gas from total strangers, and hoping we didn't get shot. That's the good news... people are exceptionally friendly in Belize. (we did get gas and get back to our hotel eventually!)

The further south you go, the more rural and less populated it gets. There was pretty nice, burly jungle down there.

But as we discovered a little too late, the treasure of belize is not on the mainland, but the islands or Cayes (pronounced Keys). Cay Corker is to the NW of Belize City... you can take a ferry out there for pretty cheap, and it's loaded with young people who are diving and generally partying and enjoying the beach lifestyle. It's nice, and very touristy. There's amazing diving/snorkeling once you get out to the Cayes, and I definitely recommend you hop on a boat and at least snorkel out by the reef (to the east of the island). We only were there for the day, so I don't know where to stay there... but if I went back, I'd wager most of my time would be spent diving from that island, not on the mainland (but I've taken up scuba diving since that trip).

Back on the mainland, as I said, there's very little to Punta Gorda... It's a one gas station, couple of resteraunts kinda place (population 6,000). We went there basically to get as far from civilization as possible, and to see where the road ends... we drove to the south west corner of belize off-road in our rental car (rally style... it was pretty fun), and did day and night hiking out in the middle of nowhere with a 'native' guide.

There are, however, quite lovely Mayan ruins throughout the land, and the further south and west you go, the more there seem to be. The 'night hike' we took was actually in an area where there were supposed to be zip lines and bridges through the trees... we drove all the way out there only to find that the last hurricaine took them all out, and now there were just remnants... But the river that ran under ex-zip-lines pours out of a huge cave near the top of a hill... it's quite spectacular... and our 'native' guide took us to the cave system's 'back entrance' waaay up in the hills, where there was a tiny hole in a cave that I birthed myself through to emerge into an underground cave rivaling anything you saw in Lord Of The Rings (no shit). It was apparently an archealogical site that had just been mapped but not really explored, so I saw a couple of very rough and fairly uninterestingancient artifacts in the cave (again, no shit). I'm proud to say I didn't take the broken clay bowl piece that I found, which anyone visiting my house would look at and go "eh", and instead left it for science. But the underground caves were very cool. Belize is cool for caves...

Another great thing as you certainly know is that ENGLISH is the official language of Belize (unlike the U.S.) so everyone speaks it... even the 'natives' who are literally living in cinder block houses and sometimes HUTS. Yes. Huts. (the further from the city you get the more you see this).

We drove to the Guatemalan border (not so interesting), of which there is only one road because the Guatemalans are bastards and no one likes them (there are also only two roads from mexico into Guatemala. No body likes them... they should sulk). Near the border there are towns called Santa Elena/San Ignacio... all quite uninteresting, but there are hanging suspension bridges that you can walk through the 'jungle' and see some lovely waterfalls from. Not worth driving there for that, but if you're going to the border anyway, it's worth a stop.

About half way to the Guatemalan border, there there's an area called Caves Branch River and a 'resort' called Jaguar Paw. There are fabled to be Jaguar out in this area, although we never saw any. but what we did find we loved... That was CAVE TUBING.

Ah cave tubing.

You see, there are all these underground aquifers pulsing with tons of water because this is, after all, the tropics. But belize is quite jagged, with small, sharp peaks and underground caves, and what happens is the ground collapses all over the place, and the aquifer is exposed... So what is a tourist such as yourself to do?

Grab an innertube, hike about a mile and a half/two miles through a lovely jungle, and toss your tube into the crystal clear water... drift down stream INTO UNDERGROUND CAVES. Yes... it's really as cool as it sounds. These caves are HUGE. Bring a head-lamp that is water proof (good thing to have in the tropics anyway), and you can see underground caves, formaitons, and waterfalls.. then erupt back into the tropical sunlight that feels like the Jungle Book... and then float back underground itno another huge cave.

There are generally guided tours of these things, although once you do it once, you can do it again on your own. We hired a guy at the parking area for the one we did, and he ended up being our guide for the rest of the trip.

That's the other thing... the people are very friendly... and very poor. Food and services like guides are pretty cheap if you go native. The cave tubeing was magical, and still one of my favorite experiences ANYWHERE so you have to do it. I demand it.

Belize also has a "babboon" sanctuary. There are, of course, no babboons outside of Africa or zoos, but the babboons in Belize think the Howler Monkeys they have are babboons... Anyway, they make an impressive roar and although we came too late in the evening to see them, they ARE there and they give guided tours if you get there earlier than we did (after sundown). We still got the guided tour (bribes work) but only got to talk with the angry male monkey who sounded like a lion... never saw him just the tree he was shaking to intimidate us. That was OK, but I'd recommend you learn from us and NOT spend your days hunting for monkeys (we called our trip the quest for monkeys because we went to all these jungles in southern mexico and Belize, hoping to see our first wild monkeys, and not a single damn monkey was to be found... Of course every person we talked to had just ridden a jaguar through crowds of monkeys and aligators...

Fortunately, I later went to Costa Rica and Thailand... Two countries where they give out free monkeys when you step off the plane, so not only did I get my fix, I was completely monkey-jaded by the end of those trips, slipping monkeys a few bucks to steal chips from (and fling poo at) other eco-tourists).

But for all it's wilderness, the most exciting wildlife we saw in Belize were Jesus Christ lizards, so named because they stand up on their hind legs and run across the water, making you shout "Jesus CHRIST!" as you fumble for your camera trying to get a photo.

There was also a place we visited called "blue hole" which was essentially a natural spring that emerges with amazing blue water in the middle of a cave/hole in the ground in the middle of jungle. It was lovely, but not worth the drive, or the amazing mass of mosquitos that were there.

OHHHH... The mosquitos! Especially on the mainland, you need to get used to this sound: "Whack. Whack. Whack whack. WHACK!" That's not the neighboring hotel room's over eager teenage son. That's you smacking the mosquitos which have also figured out that Belize is a much lovelier place than Mexico... when you cross the border from Mexico to Belize, you suddenly exchange people who don't speak English and are constantly trying to screw you out of money while creating huge piles of garbage everywhere, for friendly and helpful people who speak english and keep their very poor country quite clean, but whose national bird is the Mosquito. They're everywhere in Belize and good repellant will be your friend.

If I were to do Belize again, I'd probably spend two days on the mainland... one for cave tubing and the attractions along the road to Guatemala, and one day to head south and see the jagged mountains and mayan ruins of the Southern region. Then I'd hop on the ferry out to the Cayes and spend my time diving and relaxing in the truly caribbean splendor of Belize's island life.

By the way, Belize has a FASCINATING history of british pirates who were continually screwing with the spanish fleets that were busy pillaging the rest of the Americas.

Yes, that's right... She's pointing to Howie Long's pee-pee...  And shouting "I want THAT car!  That's a BIG girl car!"  To which Howie smiles and says "She's a SMART little girl." 

No.

No, Howie, she's not. 

She's calling your Oscar-Meyer-Of-Love a big car.

And while EVERY guy likes to think of his 'manhood' as rivaling that of a blue whale's, the shape alone, no matter how many STDs, could never look like an SUV... making them hard to confuse.

(Now if they were selling a penis-shaped-car like the Jaguar XK-E, perhaps this confusion would be understandable)

Whoever directed this commercial is either a COMPLETE idiot... or a total GENIUS (after all, it got my attention, right?  who can forget the ad with the girl going for Howie long's crotchal-region?)

I know I can't wait to drive MY new Howie Long's Schlong down the road! 

Please don't ask the miles per gallon.

Nice work guys. 

I first started picking up on this principle when I was in college. When I met a girl at a party, in a class, or at the coffee house where I studied, I'd talk to her in a way that was very nice... I was polite, thoughtful and considerate. I'd show a lot of interest, ask a lot of questions, furrow my eyebrows and nod my head a lot. Sometimes I'd put on a skirt and a wig and offer to go shopping with her. Well, not really... but looking back I realize that I may as well have. Because even though I'd very often get a number, almost always I'd end up lost in Friendville...

The girls I met this way would systematically walk all over me, ignore me, not call, not return my calls, and simply flake. If it was highly convenient for them, and there was a way to use me, then perhaps I'd have the honor of their company, where I'd be expected to buy them a meal and play tour-guide in exchange for 'the hug'... You know the one I mean... the hug where there's a force-field around her hips that creates two feet of empty space between your stomachs, and a nice pat on the back to boot. Ouch.

I noticed something else... (I had a lot of time to observe things, since my social calendar made Ted Kaczynski look like a daring socialite). Every once in a while I'd see one of these girls out again, and they'd be out with some guy who was a total jerk. He'd make fun of her, ignore her, check out other women, and just be generally unavailable to her... and she'd hang on his arm like a rhesus monkey.

As for me, occasionally I'd get 'lucky', and meet a girl who had been in a relationship with a jerk, and who was treated so poorly that my attention felt good to her... for a short while. But sooner or later, she'd return to the jerk for her 'fix'. Or sometimes, I'd have a girl pursue me, and I wouldn't be all that into her, which seemed to drive her nuts, and make her all the more after me lucky charms. I saw a theme developing... a pattern I couldn't explain.
At the time it seemed like the most confusing thing in the world... why would a woman want to be treated poorly? It seemed that more the woman was ignored, the more invested she became, and the nicer she was treated, the deeper into 'Friendsville' I found myself? Women's attraction to men who are 'jerks' is a universally accepted phenomenon, yet the nice guys remain nice...
...and lonely.

So why does an attractive woman ignore a 'nice guy' to end up in the arms of some 'jerk'? To understand this, you must first put yourself in the shoes of an attractive woman. You have to understand her reality and how you fit into it.

To help you understand her reality, let me give you an example... Imagine you are walking through the Louvre museum in Paris... This is a giant museum filled with some of the greatest masterpieces of our civilization... Paintings worth millions... many that are priceless... works of art that define our culture, our society and our civilization.

But... there are 12 miles of paintings... after walking around for a few hours, you're so overwhelmed by all the artwork that all you see is just another painting and another painting and another painting. You are in sensory overload, and even though these are great works of art, it gets to the point where you are sort of sick of it, with the exception of the few paintings that REALLY JUMP OUT AT YOU.

Every once in a while, you come across something totally different and fascinating, and it captures your attention. But all the other paintings, even though they are masterpieces, just sort of disappear into the background.

This 'jaded' state of mind is the mind frame of the attractive woman being approached by men. Like those paintings, you may be a masterpiece in your own way, but if you are to stand out to her, you must DISTINGUISH yourself from the other men out there... or risk disappearing into the background.

Now, for an attractive woman, there's nothing unique or interesting about having you come up and tell her how great she is and how much you'd like to kiss her ass. An attractive woman is approached anywhere from 5 to 47 times a day, every day, day after day for years and years, so she's heard the same thing so many times, she probably feels like she can see into the future, because she knows what you're going to do and say before you even walk up and say it. While this approach may be unique for you, to her it is happening CONSTANTLY.

However, it is rare and fascinating when a guy shows he DOESN'T need a woman's approval... when he shows he's just as valuable as she is. And how do you learn to project this message? By learning from the behavior of successful 'jerks'.

I think of it like this: everyone wants to do the best that they possibly can when it comes to catching a mate. It's human nature, the basic economics of dating... the calculus of attraction. If you're with a 7 and you think you can get a 10, you're going to be on the lookout for that 10, looking for an 'upgrade'. Here's the catch: we don't come out of the womb with a number stamped on our foreheads. For a man, it's clearer when a woman is a 9 or a 10 to him, because a man's attraction to a woman is mainly determined by physical appearance (hip to waist ratio, breast size, ratio of eyes to nose to lips, symmetry, etc).
However, for a woman, attraction to a man is determined by very different factors. A woman will place much less emphasis on a man's appearance, and will judge his attractiveness more by personality traits. Thus, for a woman, the game is much more complicated. It is unclear to a woman if a guy is a 6 or a 10 until he DOES SOMETHING, either good or bad, to demonstrate his character... is he confident? Is he funny? Is he insecure? Guess what? This is what is killing your game... and you know what?

THIS IS GREAT NEWS FOR YOU!

Because of this fact, you can change yourself from a 4 to a 9 or 10 by changing the way you present yourself to a woman... no costly plastic surgery, hair implants, ass implants, or designer wardrobe needed. (well, the ass implants may help a bit...)

So how does this work? Well, women are universally attracted to the qualities of confidence, composure, dominance and power... the qualities of the Alpha male. So here's what's wrong with being a 'nice guy'; when a guy is 'nice' and kisses a woman's ass, compliments her, tells her how much he likes her, wants to spend all his time with her... the scoring mechanism in the woman goes 'hmm... well, he's pretty into me... I must be able to do better; and, conversely, he probably can't do any better than me.'
So she searches for a better match.
The guy, who probably realizes he can't do any better, starts freaking out as he feels her slipping away, and gives off an even more insecure and needy vibe. This cycle continues until the woman ultimately leaves him for a man who 'gets it.'
What is that guy who 'gets it' like? He's the one the 'nice guys' call the 'jerk', the 'asshole', or the 'bad-boy'. The jerk can take or leave the woman, doesn't care what she wants, thinks, or does. He is totally indifferent to everything she does, is unaffected by her games, and is consistently displaying that he doesn't need her approval.
He busts on her, breaks plans with her, forgets to call her, and she comes running back for more. Why? Because the message to her is LOUD AND CLEAR:

"I'm a 10 and you are lucky to have me. By the way I treat you, it's obvious that there's no way you could do better... and if you look at how I treat you, you'll realize I probably CAN do better than you. So you'd better treat me well, because I just may leave you for a woman who is a 10."

This attitude triggers a mechanism in the woman that says: I've caught a guy who is the best I could possibly do... maybe better than I will ever do again! And as a result, she will do anything, (and I mean ANYTHING) to keep him.

Now you don't have to be a jerk or an asshole to get her to view you as a 10... By simply refusing to kiss her ass, by displaying your willingness to walk away, to remain unaffected by her theatrics when she tests you, and to tease her as you would a girl you're not interested in, you send the same message (without all the emotional scarring).

So the bad news is that the way you treat yourself is making you look like a loser.
But the great news is that you can choose to set your own price. You determine your worth by the way you hold yourself, and the way you treat yourself in relation to her.

It's like the Matrix... you create your own reality.

So the next time you're approaching a woman, remind yourself of this simple fact: if you treat yourself like a 10, you will be.

But as of today, July 15 2005, this is the coolest toy ever...